Comparison not working

Hello everyone, I am currently in the beginning stages of writing a C IRC bot, and I wanted to integrate something so that there would be a password that had to be provided in order to start it. I have started a way to either specify the password as an argument or by starting the bot normally, however neither are working. Also if I simply open the executable in a text editor, the password is perfectly readable inside of it. Is there any way to obscure the password in the executable and make if so that it actually works? Thanks.